


The Eulogy

by DitescoMori, ohrabbitheart



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 19:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1910790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DitescoMori/pseuds/DitescoMori, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohrabbitheart/pseuds/ohrabbitheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint and Natasha at Phil's memorial service. This is how the world ends...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eulogy

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to DitescoMori (normal text) for writing Clint's part and for giving him such phenomenal characterization that makes him come alive. You are brilliant! I wrote Natasha in first person, and her part is in italics.

There are three days in the life of Clint Barton in which he has disappeared.

The first one is the night two police officers come knocking on his doorstep, and the navy of their uniform mingles them into the darkness. He vaguely remembers the occasion he almost drowned while on vacation with his family when they took him out to see the ocean for the first time. But Clint remembers clearly the smell of rain ebbing from the fabrics of the men before him, catching a scent of sweat in the lingering coils of the wafts, along with the starchiness of duty’s rigor. At that time, they seemed as tall as giants, the rim of their hats drenched in rain water dripping continuously on the welcoming mat by his doorstep. He remembers the noise and echo of each drop on their otherwise lustrous and pristine shoes, the exact amount of light their emblems palely caught in the broken light of the porch. Barney holds his hand, and that is all he needs to know. That what these strangers at his door say is true.

His parents aren't coming back home.

He runs. He takes the prized items any boy his age can and tosses them into his backpack, and he runs. He thinks of fishing trips and camping days. He runs. He thinks of his mother's cooking during Christmas. He runs. He remembers a scent of tobacco. He doesn't stop because the blisters on his feet start bleeding, or because he has realized he's run too far from home and he doesn't know the way back. He stops only because he realizes that no lengths in this Earth, no distance, will make him forget the smell of the cologne his father used, or the way his mother held her hair.

The second memento comes in the shape of his brother's eyes.

At some point, he and Barney were the same. They slept in the same bed, wore the same clothes, liked the same Sunday comic strips, they fixed their hair in the same way and skipped church for the same reasons. Barney was everything: the laughter behind each deed, the rewarding smile behind well executed mischief, the wind pushing the back of his legs, the hands on his back, ready to catch him whenever Clint was falling.  
  
He chooses to watch the handcuffs on his hands, amazed that he's never noticed his wrists to be so broad. The metal catches the light of the room, stringent and strong, burning his vision, and he remembers the smell of rain. The silence of the last ten minutes weighs them down, and Clint can almost swear it's three of them in that room, but the thought is foolish and childish, as regret isn't physical. His lips part to say something, to apologize for this abrupt parting of ways, to say he's sorry he's two years his junior and therefore cannot go to jail. A good brother would have stopped him from going into that store, instead of following him into it. But Clint is slowly learning he is not that good of a brother.  
  
"You're dead to me, little brother," Barney sanctions, and Clint knows this is not one of their jokes. He knows his brother like the palm of his hand, enough to recognize the hatred that fuel his eyes.

He climbs to the highest tree he can find at their old house and doesn't leave until the third day. Not because he's hungry or tired. He only comes down because he realizes that it's time to live for himself.

The third time he refuses to leave the basement.

They know where he dwells, but none dare to interfere with his mourning. They hear the bow tense and release until the symmetric noise in the bowels of the house becomes a metronome. Every arrow he releases holds an unrelenting burden. His hands are red and caked with blood, but the pain does not hinder him. It keeps him alive. Raw. All bare, bone and marrow, steeling himself to feel, to remember.

Phil Coulson is dead.

The memories come at intervals. In all of his memories, he is younger; with the cockles at his lips less enunciated, but always the ready host to that beatific smile only hardened by the times he disappointed him. He remembers the way he taught him to drink coffee: pure and black, without distractions or shrills of any kind, and how Clint always had the suspicion that was an allusion for his philosophy of living. He remembers how he loved: the woman in Portland, and can vouch for the color of her eyes and the color of her hair, while he remembers each stroke and careful chord of the symphonies he attended. He remembers how he dreamt: of a world without fear, where they could protect those who could not defend themselves. He remembers how he laughed: like an adult who had chosen not to let himself be forlorn by the world about him, like the kid that collected his favorite hero’s cards and brought them along with him every single time. He remembers how he feared: not for his life, but for the lives of the people about him, the people he had come to cherish and love as brothers and sisters.

The only thing he cannot remember is the way he died.

Because Clint failed him. Because he was not there.

And Clint makes himself feel Coulson’s death a thousand times over. Then, he will make himself suffer a thousand more.

He is not aware of when she enters the room, but he feels her hands on his own, gently taking away the bow. There are times in which Clint fears Natasha. There is a language she harbors with death itself, the way she confronts it without fear and full dominion of herself. This time Clint doesn’t fear her, he simply envies her.

He doesn’t recoil when she pours alcohol on his knuckles, nor flinch by the time his hands are wrapped up in bandages. He is thankful she doesn’t remark the redness of his eyes, and the bottles that he has broken in the basement. He knows there is an entire crowd of people up there, waiting for him to explain the life and death of Phil Coulson in a eulogy that will fall short of all the colors his former handler deserves. But Clint is zealous. For the first and only time in his life, he is self-centered. He doesn’t want them to know the man he spent the last several years of his life with. He wishes to preserve this memory for himself, and himself only. He knows that is not what Coulson would have wanted for him to do, but he allows himself to be selfish for once in his lifetime.

Natasha takes her leave and takes his bow along with her. But she stops by the stairs. He silently follows. Because death has taught him not to run and to be brave.  
  


* * *

 

 

_People assume all manner of things about the Black Widow. About the Red Room operative. The rogue assassin. The SHIELD agent. They say she has no feelings. That she’s cold and emotionless. That it’s easier for her to pull the trigger than it is for her to flash a genuine smile. These suppositions are necessary in field work. They’re necessary to keep oneself alive. To keep an air of haunting mystery. But the Widow is far more complicated than any of these hypotheses. I know this because I am currently staring absently into the mirror and gazing into Natasha Romanoff’s sage optics. I contain multitudes, but I doubt anyone would understand the tears brimming my eyes right now. Because the Widow doesn’t cry. Machines are incapable of such a feat._

_The bathroom is spacious and pristine, but there is still a suit hanging on the back of the door, and I can still smell his cologne faintly wafting from behind the medicine cabinet’s reflective facade. If our coworkers weren’t outside, if that woman from Portland wasn’t roaming around with a tissue gripped tightly in her hand like a fucking security blanket, I would strip out of my pencil skirt and jacket to better feel against my skin the fabric of the suit hanging from the door as I stepped into it and curled myself like a cat in the bottom of the bathtub. The whole place is Coulson, and it makes me ache in ways I haven’t cared to acknowledge I can feel._

_The world presumes the Widow is incapable of human emotion, but Phil Coulson never did. Sure, he questioned Barton’s blatant disobeyment of very precise orders when it came to killing me, but I was never treated like a weapon. Perhaps I should have been. Perhaps SHIELD had been right. I knew the truth behind it all, Fury had originally seen me as a very powerful asset who needed to be controlled. Phil always saw me as more than that. A human being. A woman with blood and tissue and a brain that was capable of more than tracing bullet trajectories and wind speed. He was more family than I had ever had, and he had taken to my partner because they both shared the same values._

_Two of the finest men SHIELD would ever have the privilege to employ. Two of the finest men I would ever have the privilege to know. And all I want to do is weep in a bathtub in a borrowed suit while my partner succumbs to his own self-inflicted punishments. But I have to remain the strong one. I have people to care for, operatives to train, missions to oversee, and an entire security division to monitor because losses like this can cause even the best organizations to crumble. Nick Fury may be the director, but Phil Coulson was the heart and soul of SHIELD. And here I am standing at the foot of a raging inferno threatening to burn us all to ashes._

_If it comes to that, I need to prepare my exit strategy. I’ll never be able to save it._

_Below, my ears pick up the easy tempo of tensed string being released, the projectile finding purchase over and over again. Bottles break. Skin splits. Knuckles crack. These are sounds of sorrow, but they do not match the typical cacophony of murmured condolences and the sharp inhales and exhales of sobbing. It’s just enough to break me from my reverie, to finally see again Natasha’s eyes and the bathroom I’ve taken to hiding in. His cologne leaves me. His suit is a blurred memory behind a door being thrown open as I find myself surrounded by those in mourning. The cellist’s eyes find me. She seems intrigued that such a unique young woman with flaming red hair could be Phil’s niece. At first the notion had been amusing, now it’s just sad._

_I weave my way through the crowd toward the basement door, my presence shifting people out of my way like Moses parting the Red Sea. My hands reach for the doorknob and turn, the door opening away from me and down a steep flight of stairs where, at the bottom, Clint sits in despondent exhaustion. His bow is still gripped tightly in his hands, and it is easy to spot the damage he has done. The floor is strewn with broken glass, and holes just perfect enough to match Clint’s fists line the walls where his arrows haven’t penetrated. There are spots of blood on the drywall mixing with rage-delirious sweat, and bolt after bolt has been shredded by another split arrow. This won’t exactly be cheap to replace, and Fury will more than likely take it from Clint’s paycheck. But, like Barton, I don’t care._

_Especially not when I see his face._

_His eyes are vacant, lost in some unseeing memory. We hadn’t immediately told him of Coulson’s demise after he woke up from Loki’s mind games. I had struggled with my orders, but followed them nonetheless. Clint had just come back to us, and no one was sure if we would lose him again. We waited to tell him until after Loki and Thor were long gone. Waited because he was unstable and unpredictable. Waited because we were all afraid of what he would do to any number of us if we stood in the way of him ripping Loki limb from limb and flaying him alive._

_I know torture. I know how to make men suffer. I never want Barton to be capable of those atrocities. He already has enough trouble sleeping at night._

_The skin on his hands are broken and bleeding, and he doesn’t even acknowledge me when I approach him with a half-drank bottle of vodka wrapped in my fingers. It had been a gift from me when Coulson went on vacation. Russian. The good stuff. Capable of killing just about any germ or bacteria it came into contact with. I pour it over Clint’s knuckles without much delicacy and begin wrapping his hands with the hem of my shirt. Just like old times. Welcome to the warzone._

_Nothing is said. No eye contact is made, and I can’t help but realize this is the longest either of us have gone without speaking and it feels like I’ve lost the other important person in my life as well. I stand, take his bow, and make way for the stairs. He follows, silent and forlorn and lost to a sea of memories we’d both rather drown in than talk about ever again. And even in his dying moment, Phil Coulson gave us all more than our words will ever convey. But we’ll say them. And we’ll mean them. And when it’s all said and done, we’ll crawl back to our homes with our wounds dripping with blood and our broken parts spilling out. I’ll fix what I can and wait for what I can’t to come to a head. I’ll wait and let Clint take it out on me if need be. Because I’m more than a machine, and Phil always knew that. And now it’s blatantly obvious why Barton and I remain partners after all these years._

****  
  
  
  



End file.
